How To Make - Synthwave with Timecop 1983 / 221

Really, really enjoyed this course, I learned something new in every video. Thank you Jordy & the Sonic Academy crew! And that VSDSX drums plugin… that’s gonna be my new favorite toy for quite a while! Wowza!!

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I am a poor polish student, but I decided that starvation is will be not that poor choice, when I can pay for this course! And for real - this course is awesome and it alone pays for the monthly subscription plan :smiley:

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I’ll touch on what I mentioned in another post and give my opinion which some may or may not agree with. To be quite honest, I’m not happy with this tutorial, particularly the mastering part and by default the mixing part or lack thereof… Clearly he did some things (which are not shown to us in this video) to get that reverb under control as it was a muddy mess before the mastering part. Then in the mastering part before he adds any processing, the reverb is “relatively” under control and the the track is mysteriously already ported to .WAV without us getting to see the further mixing he obviously did before porting it to .WAV, after which he just does an extremely simple single stem master which I can’t possibly see being all that is needed to make this a commercially viable track.

There are definitely several important things, steps, and general information being omitted in this tutorial which is disappointing. I’m very surprised that I’m the only one that I know of who seems to notice this. With that said, there are still things to learn here, so the tutorial definitely has value, just know that there are some extremely important details on the mixing and mastering that would bring this track to a commercially viable level that are completely omitted, which is a problem when it’s such a massively important part of producing a track.

Hi there @Drakkar

Sorry to read that you found the mastering part of this tutorial lacking information but IMO you’re focusing on the less important part of this course. Like the tutor mentioned, the main goal of this “How to Make” tutorial was to show how to make a synthwave genre track and I think he did pretty well in that regard. Crafting the individual sounds & arranging the all mix is very well explained and the presets + midi files as well as the FL studio project files available in the course resources really help to achieve this.

Now back to mastering, it doesn’t have to always be something extremely complicated. If the mix is already sounding good and if you took care of your levels and some EQing, it’s just a matter of cutting unwanted frequencies, final EQing and boosting the levels. So yes, you can get away with a single stem & a relatively simple mastering chain in the end.

Not sure what video you’re referring to when writing that something was done between the end of the track arrangement and the final stem export to .wav and that reverb all over the place before it. He’s not even playing the same part between video 10 & 11, so it’s difficult to judge this IMHO.

@Tekalight I respect your opinion that mixing and mastering is the less important part, but we can agree to disagree there as IMO mixing and mastering is half of the process and can literally make or break a track no matter how well its laid out or how good the individual elements sound. The type of mixing and mastering can vary by genre as well which is why it’s especially important in genre specific tutorials like this to not leave those details out. The Jaytech tutorial on this site is actually quite good in this area. As I mentioned before, this tutorial does have value for sure, and people who are interested in synthwave and getting insight into how a well known synthwave producer lays out a track could benefit from this. I’m just giving some constructive feedback so future tutorials can be more thorough. That’s my feedback, hopefully it doesn’t offend anyone and people can appreciate and focus on the constructiveness of it.

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Great Insight!

My Hero giving is giving a tutorial?? hellz yessz

Already a Legend. Great started

Great course.

I wished there were more courses on synthwave and retro wave like this

Very nice tutorial about an awesome song. Thank you

Incredible tutorial this helps me to understand more about synth music.

Stellar!

very nice congratulations!!!
5 stars!!
I have small language difficulties and because I am a Studio One user, but the course is very good. I hope you will take courses with S1 !!!

Excellent tutorial!.. helped be jump start my track!
I could take the concepts in this course and apply it to Reason.

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Very good tutorial. I was impressed by how simplicity can create so emotional tracks.

I downloaded the OB-XD but there is no white noise preset called noisy on it. How do you get that sound?

Hi there @Praze

There’s some presets in the Resource’s download HTM_Synthwave_Resources.zip, once you expand the archive you’ll find a Project Files/Presets sub-folder in the main folder. First place to check but there’s no preset called Noisy, maybe it’s the Filtered Sweep - OBXD.fxp though, check this one first.

Alternatively since there’s a full FL Studio Project included in the resources, another solution would be to download and install the demo version of FL Studio. While you can’t save & reload projects with FL Studio demo, you’re able to open existing Projects. I tried with latest version and the project opens up. If you have the OB-XD synth installed you’ll then be able to save the preset from FL.

A fine course, but with some major flaws (IMO).
It’s not a “deep” tutorial, it’s just: “I use this, do this and get this result.” - that’s it.
Is it possible to substitute one of the VSTs used with a cheaper (or even free) one? Is it really necessary to use that many different plugins? Why so many reverbs, are they really different (and how)? Who knows…
Maybe some tips & tricks along the way? Nope.
And as it was previously said: almost nothing about mixing and mastering whatsoever.
Too shallow for a tutorial, too detailed for a “in the studio” type of video or a review.

A AMAZING COURSE WHICH HELP ME A lot in Synthwave !!!